


All That Remains

by VeteranKlaus



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [6]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amputation, Angst, Bad Things Happen Bingo, Hurt, Loss of Limbs, PTSD, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-05
Updated: 2019-09-05
Packaged: 2020-10-10 17:04:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20531510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeteranKlaus/pseuds/VeteranKlaus
Summary: Prompt: came back wrong.Klaus returns from Vietnam a little differently.





	All That Remains

Klaus fell off the bus. The briefcase fell from his bloody grasp, clattering to the floor, and was followed by his own body. He only just caught himself in time, twisting his hips so he landed on his good knee (his only knee, technically) and let his upper body fall gracelessly against the pavement. He found at his fingertips the blasted briefcase that had so easily twisted and destroyed his life. His nails, caked in dirt, scratched at its smooth leather and drew it close to his body, using it almost as some leverage to pick himself up from the pavement. 

His head turned side to side, taking in the city he had left eleven odd months ago. It was almost overwhelming, the dramatic shift in scenery; going from a dark, smelling tent, to a loud, bright, bustling city; the sounds and sights assaulted him, unfamiliar after so long away from them. His teeth ground together painfully and his eyes burned, squeezed tightly shut to find some reprieve from the onslaught of the city. His ears rang with phantom explosions and gunshots.

He was filthy. He hadn't properly showered since before they went to the front lines. They had cleaned the wound he received but the attacks had left them overwhelmed with casualties. His skin was pale like the ash he could still taste on his tongue, his hair sweat-damped and greasy, clinging to his head, and the only colour to his skin was that of dirt, soot and blood. He left red streaks where he clawed at the briefcase. He looked down at it with watery eyes, and then they hardened, and he closed his hand around the handle and hauled himself upright, then he threw it down as hard as he could with a sound torn from his throat. It skid across the ground before thudding into a bench, and Klaus' hands curled into his hair, tugging harshly until it felt as if he might rip fistfuls out, and he yelled. He yelled until there was no more air in his lungs and he had to gasp for breaths, chest heaving. 

He was back, but did it really matter? Dave was dead and he might as well be. He looked like a corpse, too, perfectly ready to be dropped into a ditch and buried. The last however many weeks it had been - he had spent it all delirious and feverish - saw him lose muscle and weight, leaving him like a zombie. He felt just as dead. What was he even to do now? His home for the last ten months or so had been a warzone - no, his home had been Dave. And Dave was dead. And in this time, he didn't have a home. 

Part of him, though, longed to find his family in the academy, awaiting for his return from his disappearance, and they'd help him. That wasn't what would happen, though. But he had nowhere else to go.

Klaus had not walked much. After the wound had healed, he had slowly, very slowly, begun physical therapy. After he could walk the length of the tent, though, he had grabbed his briefcase and returned. Now, it was simply determination that spurred him on. It was agony. Each step made him feel like he was going to fall, and he fell many times. Tripping over things he couldn't feel, taking strides that were too long, too short, misplacing himself, misjudging everything. The palms of his hands ended up scraped apart from catching himself, his knee aching. 

He could feel Dave beneath his hands. Dave, with no heart beat, blood sliding between his fingers. Dave's dog tags heavy around his neck, and then an explosion that left him with a leg amputed above his knee, and a shoddy 70s prosthesis that he didn't know how to walk with. He realised, also, that he didn't really care. He didn't want to learn how to deal with it. He didn't want to spend months relearning how to walk without leaning against things, without tripping and falling and wincing with each step. He didn't care. 

He felt like he might collapse by the time he reached the academy doors which were, thankfully, open. He felt like a ghost as he stepped inside, the academy a foreign place to him now. He hardly recognised the marble floors and the pillars, the decorations, the family portraits. When he stared at his face, framed in a professional portrait, he didn't recognise that kid. It wasn't him anymore. He didn't feel like the same person who had shown up to his father's funeral high, already stealing whatever he could get his hands on. He felt like that man died in Vietnam. Maybe he had. Maybe he had died in a feverish night, and been thrown back to his original time, the ghost of a lost, bloody soldier in their home. Maybe it would have been better if he had died. At least then he would be with Dave, wherever he was, and maybe he would never have been born, too, and he'd be completely erased from time for everyone but Dave. 

The sense of homesickness hadn't abated since walking into the academy. It simply worsened at the realisation that even in such a state, Klaus had nowhere and no one safe and loving to return to. No place to call his own where he could feel safe, no one who would take care of him and love away all this pain. 

The prosthesis tapped in a similar fashion to the old heeled boots he used to wear, clicking its way along the floor, hissing as he dragged it. His thigh ached, burning furiously like napalm. His body shook with exertion and exhaustion, and he stood in front of the endless staircase. A sigh left his lips, and he didn't want to try. He really didn't want to. He did.

He hardly made it a quarter of the way up before he forced himself to sit on the stairs before he fell, because that would be worse. He didn't realise he was crying; detached tears falling like a river down his cheeks, leaving clean marks through the dirt. He couldn't even get up the stairs. He couldn't keep Dave alive. Couldn't do anything.

Klaus gripped his dog tags. The stairs dug into his ribs as he all but laid across them, burning thigh and prosthesis stretched below him. His head ached and his ears rang. 

He longed for Dave, in that moment, with his calloused hands and his cheesy smile, but Dave was dead, and had died in pain, in his arms, and no amount of yelling had called a medic. He longed for the things he couldn't have. He longed for someone to come in through the door and help him, to care about him, and he longed to not be in so much pain, to be so helpless that he couldn't even get up a set of stairs. 

Of course, though, he couldn't get any of that. When he smeared blood over his cheeks while wiping away his tears, he faced upwards, and settled on trying to crawl up the stairs, because he simply couldn't do anything else. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm... very much considering making this an actual fic, rather than just a short oneshot. Would anyone be interested in that?
> 
> \- scratch that, I will continue it in a new fic on my account, for everyone asking! <3


End file.
